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Just under half of the UK want to quit their job to travel

Do you have that burning desire to escape the workplace for a life of travel?

With summer fast approaching 48% of the UK workforce are not planning their summer holiday, instead they are looking to swap their briefcase for a backpack and travel the world.

Inghams ran a nationwide survey to 2,000 people via One Poll to find out the most popular items on Brits bucket- lists, which revealed travel overall was the most desired thing to do. It was interesting to discover that 22% said they don’t have enough holiday allowance to travel.

Louise Newton, Group Head of Marketing at Inghams commented “It’s disappointing to hear that a fourth of the UK don’t have a suitable holiday allowance to take a holiday. Should people want to travel this may lead to taking days unpaid which ultimately has an effect on the overall cost of the holiday. However short excursions could be the answer, this allows you to take a short break to travel and hopefully leaves you with a couple of days spare for something else”.

With a large proportion of the workforce wanting to quit the daily grind of the 9 to 5 to travel we were interested to see how many respondents had already ticked this of their list. Just under a fourth of people aged 55 over said they have quit their job to take early retirement to travel (19 percent) compared to 6% of 18 to 24 year old’s who have gone travelling for a year.

When people were asked what has been the best thing they have ticked off their bucket- list so far, losing weight was ranked higher than scaling the career ladder. Just over a third of men said they have scaled the career ladder compared to 28% of women and a further third of women said they were not interested in getting further up the career ladder (33 percent).

The Top 20 Bucket List Items Revealed

Bucket List Items

%

See the Northern lights

73.00%

Visit the Galapagos Islands

57.00%

Go on a safari

54.00%

Visit the arctic circle

53.00%

Take a ride on a husky drawn sleigh in Lapland

51.00%

Ride a hot air balloon

50.00%

Quit their job and travel

48.00%

Go on a luxury cruise

47.00%

Learn a new language

45.00%

Lose weight

40.00%

Meet one of my heroes

42.00%

Scale the career ladder

38.00%

Do a cookery course

37.00%

Start my own business

35.00%

Own a fast car

33.00%

Buy a house

31.00%

Get married

31.00%

Go Skiing

30.00%

Do an extreme assault course

29.00%

Start a family

28.00%

Over half of respondents aged 25 to 34 said they would like to start their own business (51 percent), however it seems men have more interest in doing this than women with over third of men (36 percent) looking to start their own business in the next 10 years compared to 44% of women who have no desire to start their own business.

It was no surprise that Northern Lights was top of the list, with the increase interest in seeing the Northern lights in Norway or Lapland over the past few years it has become a staple of many peoples bucket- lists.

The importance of a holiday

Working nonstop without taking a holiday can really take its toll on your physical and mental health which is why it is so important to take your full holiday entitlement. Holiday entitlement differs from whether you are contracted to full or park time hours and some companies reward long standing employees with additional holiday days for every year they have worked up to a maxim of 10 years. Make sure you ask your employer what holiday allowance you are entitled to and try to book the bulk of your holidays before the end of year as many employers don’t let you carry them over.